From Kandhamal to Karavali: The Ugly Face Of Sangh Parivar A fact finding report of nine Human Rights Organisations that visited Orissa & Karnataka in Sep.-Oct. 2008 From Kandhamal to Karavali: The Ugly Face Of Sangh Parivar March - 2009 Copies: 2,500 Price: Rs. 20 For Copies: K. Balagopal (HRF) A. Marx (PUHR) 301, Sri Ram Residency 3/5, Ist Cross Street Priya Colony, Gudimalkapur Sastri Nagar, Adyar Mehdipatnam, Hyderabad-500 028 Chennai - 600 020 Ph : 040-23537969 Ph : 94441 20582 N. Babaiah (PDF) G. Sugumaran (FPR) 76, III Stage, Vinayaka Layout P.B. No 10, 175 A, M.G. Road Vijayanagar, Bangalore - 560 040 Puducherry- 605001 Ph : 94499 04487 Ph: 98940 54640 Kranthi Chaitanya (APCLC) K Kesavan (CPCL) 4-6-24, Reservoir Colony No -17, Balaji Mansion Tirupati - 517 501 Mulluvadi Gate, Salem-1 Ph : 99122 20044 Ph: 94434 39869 P.A. Sebastian (CPDR) C. Bhaskara Rao (OPDR) 110, YMCA, N. Parekh Marg Plot No. 46, Vishnupuram Colony Colaba, Mumbai - 400 001 Poranki, Vijayawada - 521 137 Ph : 98201 42752 Ph : 94400 37898 P.B. D’Sa (PUCL) Debranjan Sarangi ‘PAULINE’ A/202, Sonali Palace Father Mullers Road Sailashri Vihar Valencia, Mangalore - 2 Bhubaneswar - 751 021 Ph : 90088 20186 Ph : 93382 32536 In Brief This is a report prepared jointly by a number of Rights Organisations and individuals on the large scale violence against Christians in Orissa and Karnataka during August-September 2008. The violence was committed by Sangh Parivar organisa- tions, mainly the Bajrang Dal. Their political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) happens to be in power in both the States, and that has ensured that the police watched benignly as the arson and murder took place in public. The ideology and the organiza- tion of their mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), pervades the media in both the States to such an extent that with a few honorable exceptions, the Press has reported the violence in a manner that puts the onus on the victims: they were at fault and had it coming. All the signatories to the report did not participate in every phase of the extended fact finding, but by consensus the report is brought out collectively. In relation to the attacks in Orissa, the team/teams visited victims who have taken shelter at Visakhapatnam on 18th September, the affected areas of Kandhamal during 20th - 22nd September, the displaced victims staying in camps at Bhubaneswar and Cuttack during 25th - 26th October and the displaced victims living in the Mandasa area in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh on 30th October. In rela- tion to the more widely dispersed though less severe attacks in Karnataka, teams visited the districts of Dakshina Kannada (including Mangalore, the headquarters), Udupi, Davanagere, Chikkaballapur and the affected areas of Bengaluru city on var- ious dates in September and October, the last being a large team's visit to Mangalore city during 10th-11th October. The People's Front of India, Mangalore, accompanied the team dur- From Kandhamal to Karavali: The Ugly Face Of Sangh Parivar 3 ing the visit to Mangalore. Debranjan Sarangi, social activist of Orissa, was part of the teams throughout. Press conferences were held immediately at the conclusion of most of these visits, notably at Berhampur (Brahmapur) in Orissa on 22nd September and Mangalore on 11th October. What fol- lows is the detailed report that was promised on those occasions. Apart from our own observations, we have relied on reports on previous instances of attacks on Muslims/Christians engi- neered by the Hindutva forces in the two States, on scholarly arti- cles, Government Gazettes, credible newspaper reports, etc. In the matter of understanding and analysis of the social context and background of the respective areas, a note prepared by PUCL, Orissa and articles in Kannada and English written by Prof. Muzaffar Assadi of the faculty of Political Science, Mysore University have been very helpful, though we alone are respon- sible for the conclusions drawn. Signatories: From Andhra Pradesh: Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC) Human Rights Forum (HRF) Organisation for Protection of Democratic Rights (OPDR) From Karnataka: Peoples Democratic Forum (PDF) Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) Karnataka State Unit From Puducherry: Federation for Peoples Rights (FPR) From Tamil Nadu: Committee for Protection of Civil Liberties (CPCL) Peoples Union for Human Rights (PUHR) From Mumbai: Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR) From Kandhamal to Karavali: The Ugly Face Of Sangh Parivar 4 Terms Of Reference The attacks on Christians, their homes and churches in the States of Orissa and Karnataka by the Bajrang Dal and other associates and affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (usually referred to as Sangh Parivar) in the months of August and September 2008 (it continued further, well into November, in Orissa) has understandably caused anger, and not only among Christians. But it could not have caused surprise. The attacks were due, given the pathology of the idea and the political strategy of ‘lab- oratories’ of murder, rape and arson. After the Gujarat carnage of 2002, the leaders of the Sangh Parivar - not merely the rabid Praveen Togadia but the smooth talking types such as Arun Jaitley and Jaswant Singh and the uncle-ji and aunty-ji types such as Venkaiah Naidu and Sushma Swaraj - went on TV say- ing brazenly that the ‘Gujarat experiment’ was a great success and would be replicated all over India. Insofar as Orissa is con- cerned, Subhash Chouhan, State Convenor of the Bajrang Dal, has been quoted as having said to social scientist Angana Chatterjee, that ‘In India, Orissa is the second Hindu Rajya’ (Gujarat being the first). The replicable element of Gujarat was that the minorities would be brutally beaten down into accepting their subordinate status in Bharat that would be Hindu India. They have achieved it over considerable parts of the northern and western parts of India. Karnataka has long been spoken of by them as the gate- way to the South, and the Kandhamal district of Orissa opens to the South or the East, depending on where one looks from. Indeed the refugees from the Kandhamal of August-September 2008 have run both ways: South or South-East to Visakhapatnam and North or North-East to Cuttack and beyond. From Kandhamal to Karavali: The Ugly Face Of Sangh Parivar 5 There is an odd link between the two attacks, which speaks of the brazenness of the Sangh Parivar in relation to their crimes. The attack in Orissa started on 24th August. On 29th August the Christian educational institutions in Karnataka closed down for just one day in protest against the attacks in Orissa. Such protests probably took place elsewhere too, but Karnataka has a Sangh Parivar government, which took serious objection to the protest and called for an explanation, citing a complaint by the Bajrang Dal! This well publicized objection, in the eyes of the Christian community of Karnataka, set the stage for the attacks that took place in the middle of the next month. The attackers were evi- dently waiting for some such occasion ever since Yeddyurappa's seating on the gaddi in Bengaluru. In the Sangh Parivar, democratic India faces an enemy who rides on the relentless spread of systematic falsehood, and brutal execution of planned crime. The spread of falsehood is not just through published literature but also the word of mouth through the medium of the brahminised social strata that goes well beyond its actual membership and encroaches into political spaces supposedly occupied by other and even avowedly secular forces. What is spread thus is falsehood about the country's his- tory, falsehood about our society, and falsehood about contem- porary persons and contemporary events. It invents lies and piles them one upon another before beginning an attack. By the time the attack comes, all the lies are in place. But it does not begin with violent attacks. It bides time talk- ing of culture and Indian-ness, conducting Ganesh immersion and Durga puja as public demonstrations of its vision of Hindu cultural assertion accompanied by speech-making and commen- tary of saffron vintage, until the atmosphere is propitious to pull out the trishuls and the talwars. For that it often awaits the ascen- dancy to power of its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the particular State or region, which would put the administration - in particular the police - in their control. The organisations that are signatories to this report know this to be the truth about the heirs of Hedgewar and Golwalkar. We begin with this knowledge of the evil we are confronted with, which need not be discovered again and again. Fact finding in From Kandhamal to Karavali: The Ugly Face Of Sangh Parivar 6 the jungles of Kandhamal or the hills and plains of western Karnataka is not to prove this truth but only to study the ways in which it operationalises itself, and to identify the chasms in our social make-up that it makes use of for its purpose so that one may learn what to look for in other likely ‘laboratories’ and how to stop the ‘experiment’ before it takes off. The fight against the Sangh Parivar, whether on the political terrain or in civil society, whether in the realm of power or that of values, is the fight over the idea and the reality of the India we want. A humane society committed to political, social and eco- nomic justice, freedom from fear and want, liberty of thought, belief and practice, inalienable dignity of person, opportunities of equitable growth, peace in its relations with other societies and nature (all of which add up to the foundational value of equality) or an aggressive power-mongering polity based on a hierarchical and monolithic society? The insecurities of life and its inhumanity wrought by traditional structures of oppression and the crises of the growth-hungry polity, make a sane choice less easy than it would otherwise be, and the Sangh Parivar takes advantage of the fears and the want to whip up a frenzy among even social classes and communities that would otherwise lose rather gain from the hierarchical and monolithic society of its choice.